Syria Day One: Let The Debates Begin

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Debate began in the Senate this afternoon over the resolution to make war in Syria, and the lines of argument were clearly drawn. The Democrats are going to be confused and pathetic, and the Republicans are going to be toweringly hypocritical. The entire dispute is going to be conducted between those two general schools of thought. This is not the way a great power should decide whether or not to make a war. Hell, this is not the way that a kindergartner should decide whether or not to throw a rock.

The debate opened in the context of two other events. The first was a preposterous speech given by Susan Rice to the New America Foundation in which the distance between Susan Rice in 2013 and Condoleezza Rice in 2002 vanished entirely.

"Failing to respond could indicate that the United States is not prepared to use all the tools necessary to keep our nation secure... [it] would raise questions around the world as to whether the United States is truly prepared to use the full range of its power...Other global hotspots might flare up...Most disturbingly, it would send a perverse message to those who seek to use the world's worse weapons, that you can use these weapons blatantly and just get away with it...threaten our soldiers in the region and even potentially our citizens at home.

It would have been better if she'd just sent the transcript out in an aluminum tube.

The other was the sudden development by which the Russians seemed to take seriously John Kerry's perhaps-not-entirely-accidental gaffe about Syria's chemical weapons hors de combat under UN supervision. Everybody from the White House, to the Brits, to Wolf and the gang on CNN, to Hillary Clinton, who would rather not run for president with this albatross around her neck, thanks, announced that they would consider the Russian offer very seriously. It certainly would expose exactly who besides Senator Grumpy Grampa and his sidekick, Huckleberry J. Butchmeup, is in this purely to get their war on.

The news got some run during the opening of the debate, in which Harry Reid wasted very little time getting to Auschwitz and "Never again." Next up was Dan Coats of Indiana who, as a Republican, was very concerned about mission creep, and also seemed paradoxiically concerned that the proposed strikes would be too small to do much good, but big enough to "exhaust" the American people before the really big Boom Boom against Iran, which Coats would support, I suspect, if it were a Republican president launching it.

"I fear," Coats said, "that the limited punitive actions will embolden Iran because there is no broader strategic concept behind the policy. I fear that the American people will be too exhausted to confront the real strategic enemy."

It's all about Iran. And Republican presidents.

But, alas, Democratic senator Bill Nelson of Florida followed up with a request that the president use some visual aids in his speech on Tuesday night, and things really went to the zoo. He made Coats sound like Demosthenes.

"I hope the president shows some clips from the videos," Nelson said. "If he did, the American people could see the reason why, almost a century ago, in the 1920's, the nations of the world came together to ban the use of chemical weapons. If you can see the videos, you will see why. You will see what happens to human beings when they struggle for life before the throes of death overtake them. I hope the president will show these Tuesday night."

(Me, too. Quick, kids, gather 'round the TV!)

Nelson also cited other chemical weapons as weapons of mass destruction. "There's mustard gas, and a toxin called VX, and that doesn't have to be inhaled to do its evil deeds. It can be absorbed through the skin."

Jebus Christmas, that's terrible. The British probably shouldn't have invented that stuff. Later, Nelson made sure we remembered that, a while back, he gave the old why-I-oughta to Assad himself. "This senator is someone who actually has visited with Mr. Assad," Nelson said, "and had a sharp exchange over what he was doing in Lebanon. He was harboring Hezbollah. He was harboring Hamas, and of course, he denied that." By the time he got to North Korea and its "huge stockpile of chemical weapons," I decided that there wasn't much going to be said that I hadn't heard before, and the week had only just begun.